Benchley, Peter - Novel 01 Read online

  Since the weather turned poor the day we arrived, sending a chill wind off the North Sea and clouding the sun for five days, we didn't swim. During the day, we rode horseback and walked among the remains of the German bunkers that line the beach.

  One afternoon we went walking with Mrs. Roijan. After an hour or so, we stopped for a rest. Bob asked Mrs. Roijan what life in Holland had been like during the war, and she told us of the rationing and the horror and the fright that had come with the Occupation.

  "Sometimes we forget," she said. "Sometimes we can put it out of our minds. But then, for no reason at all, something will happen that brings it all back to us. Just recently it happened again."

  I asked her what happened.

  "Look over there," she said, pointing to a house beyond the dunes. "It happened to the woman in that house, no more than a year ago." She pushed her back deeper into the sand, making a hollow against the wind, and told us the story.

  The house stood two hundred yards from the beach, in a clump of pines. From the porch, you could see the remains of the German bunkers, the concrete slabs, the hump in the dune where a tunnel led from pillbox to pillbox. There was barbed wire around the bunkers now, to keep the children from crawling about and falling in one of the holes. The tunnel itself went on for miles along the coast, and there were many other tunnels branching off it. A child could easily lose his way.

  The weather had been clear that day, and the breeze from the sea gentle and warmer than usual, so the woman had left the door and windows open while she cleaned. She was in her early sixties, but she moved gracefully. She had no arthi-tis and no rheumatism, which continued year after year to astonish the other people of the town. Most people succumbed to one or the other after only a few years in the cold, damp climate of the Dutch seashore.

  Everything was going well. It had taken fifteen years of work, but the war had been all but erased from her mind.

  She wished they would remove the bunkers and the wire, but she was actually quite used to them, and they didn't bother her much. Her husband still limped from the shrapnel the German hand grenade had planted in his leg, but he was better off than many, and he got around perfectly well.

  It was the house that had taken all the time. They had lived in the house since they were married, in 1920. They had spent twenty years taking care of it, filling it with themselves, and by 1940 it was as much a part of them as they were of each other. Then the Germans came, and for four years they were away from their house. They lived in small apartments in Amsterdam while the German officers lived in their house. It was a good location, partly hidden from the sea by the trees, yet near enough to make an efficient command post for the bunkers.

  When the Germans were driven out, the couple returned home. They had not known what to expect on returning, but certainly not what they found. All the old furniture except two easy chairs had been burned for firewood and replaced by steel barracks furniture. The wallpaper had peeled away, and the walls were scarred and chipped. The paintings of the family were piled in the cellar, some ripped, others only dirty, and had been replaced by pinups of naked and semi-naked girls. The house had apparently never been cleaned, for there were mouse droppings all over the floor and in both remaining easy chairs. The ceilings were black with the soot of the open kerosene lamps the Germans had used when the electricity was cut off.

  It was on returning to her home that the woman experienced for the first time a feeling which had all her life seemed nothing more than an abstract word—hate. She had hated the war, and she hated killing and sorrow and pain, but these were feelings that she could not direct anywhere. She could not actively despise war or pain or sorrow. But now she had a hate that was almost tangible. She could feel it in her stomach, and it sometimes made her act in a way that embarrassed her. It was a hatred of all that was German, and though she knew it was unfair, she couldn't help herself. It was not hatred of cruelty or force or strength, for those things she could understand. Like all true hates, hers was something that she could not fully understand—it was of the senseless, animal destruction that the soldiers had wrought on her home. She had believed that man was basically intelligent and good, and the soldiers had shown her to be wrong. She hated the fact that they had punctured her image of man.

  But after fifteen years her hate had mellowed and lost its control of her. She had met Germans during those years, tourists mostly, and she had forced herself to accept them. The damage done to her house had been repaired, and once again the house was part of herself. She had allowed herself to forget.

  And so she was unprepared for the visitors who came to the house on that mild summer day. She was dusting the paintings, her back to the door, when she felt that someone was in the house. She turned slowly, for she was not alarmed. It was the beginning of the tourist season, and people often stopped by the "house to ask their way.

  A couple stood on the porch. The man was tall and heavyset. He had close-cropped blond hair that framed a wide, flat, dull face. The woman was tall also, with the body of a peasant girl—big, thick limbs and a solid trunk. She stood with her feet apart. They wore knapsacks with the orange and yellow and black pennants of West Germany hanging off the cover flaps.

  "Good day," said the old woman. "Can I help you?"

  "Ja" said the man. He stepped through the door into the room. "My wife and I," he said, making a full-arm sweep as a gesture toward his wife, "we are passing through. I would like to show her your house."

  "My house?" said the woman. "Why the house? There are many better houses in Noordwijk, many bigger houses. Just down the road there is—"

  "No," said the man. "Your house."

  "May I ask why?"

  "I was here in this house three years during the war. I would like my wife to see where I lived. It is different now from when I was here, but it is the same house."

  "No."

  The man was puzzled. "What?"

  "No," said the woman. Her voice was low, controlled only by great effort. "It is not the same house. It will never be the same house. You will leave."

  "But—but it is the same house. I know it is the same house."

  "It is not! It is not the same house!" The woman's voice was trembling. "Get out!" she screamed. "Get out! This is not the same house!" She ran at the man and began beating him on the chest with her fists.

  The man put up his arms to protect himself, and backed through the door. The woman slammed the door just as he stumbled against his wife on the porch.

  "Mein Gott!" said the wife. "Why did she do that?"

  "I don't know," said the man. "Old fool. The war is over.

  Doesn't she know that?" He walked to the door and knocked once, hard. "Hey, lady!" he shouted. "The war is over! You know that, don't you? The war is over!"

  There was no answer. After a moment, the man and his wife stepped down off the porch and onto the road.

  Inside, the woman leaned against the door. She was sweating, and her hands were shaking.

  "It is not over," she said quietly. "I thought so, too. I hoped so. But it is not. It can never be over."

  3

  When an American college student thinks of Scandinavia, he is seldom concerned with scenery, and almost never concerned with economic theories or political ideas. Technically, his concern is with cultural mores; actually, it is with sex. Over the years, our college students have heard innumerable stories of conquests, easy virtue, free love, and nudist beaches from friends who have spent time abroad. (We choose to remember only our successes, so in time the many failures fade from memory. Or if they do fester like open sores, we never recount them.)

  Who has not heard tales of Swedish beauties who sleep with you because they think it's fun? Who doesn't have at least one friend who has known a Danish girl who didn't demand vows of everlasting love before she would share her bed? Who, after an unsuccessful date, has not come back to his room, flopped disgustedly on the couch, and said, ''God, I wish I were in Sweden!"?

&nb
sp; Bob had been to Denmark the previous summer with some friends, and they had returned with wonderful stories of bacchanalian soirees, some admittedly embellished for effect, some boy-scout's-honor true. He still had a number of addresses, and as we waited overnight in the car for the ship from Germany to Gedser, Denmark, we pored over the names in his little book and he pointed out the virtues and shortcomings of each lass.

  As soon as we were settled in our hotel in Copenhagen, Bob rang up a girl he had spent considerable time with the summer before. She was engaged. The second girl he called was busy all that week, but she would love to see him any time after the first of the month. Finally, on the fifth try, he arranged for two dates for that evening.

  We picked up the girls at seven. Bob's young lady was short, dark-haired, with large, exquisite eyes and a full mouth. She had a body that seemed to have been compounded from all the dreams of every American male— ample chest (but not too ample), narrow waist, shapely legs and slender ankles. My date was a tall blonde named Inge, who was studying chemical engineering at the university. She had fine, sharp features and light blue-gray eyes.

  We ate dinner at Oskar Davidson's, the restaurant that has a sandwich menu four feet long and boasts more than a hundred and thirty different sandwiches. After dinner, we walked through the Tivoli and listened to the bands and rode one of the small roller coasters in the amusement park. When the roller coaster sped through a tunnel and then swooped down a steep grade, Inge gave a little shriek and grasped my arm. She did not let it go even when the car coasted to a stop. I smiled at her, and she looked back at me with those soft blue eyes and parted her lips in a happy grin. The tellers of tales had not been lying, I thought, and I looked forward to later in the evening.

  We danced for a while at Nimb, the mammoth dance hall in the Tivoli, and had some drinks—not too many, though, since Shakespeare's desire-performance comparison repeated itself over and over in my mind.

  The situation was perfect. The girls lived within a block of one another, so taking them home, we both used the car. When Inge and I got to her door, there was no embarrassed moment, no hemming and hawing, no mere "Thank you for a lovely evening." She said instead, ''Would you come in for a drink?"

  I said I thought I could spare the time. "Most nights we would have to be very quiet," she said. "But this weekend my parents are away."

  Visions of sugarplums danced in my head. I asked if I could put some music on the phonograph, and Inge said, "Of course. But put something soft on. It is too late for loud music."

  I picked a record that looked like quiet, rhythmic mood music, and put it on. It turned out to be wild jungle yells and bongo drums, backed up by bird noises and monkey calls. I fairly tore it off the spindle and put on instead a record by a man who Inge said was like Jackie Gleason. She translated the title into English. Roughly, it was "Music To Dream By."

  Inge handed me a Scotch, and we sat on the couch. I undid my tie, and she took off her shoes and curled her feet underneath her.

  "Do you like it here in Denmark?" she asked.

  "More every minute," I said, and smiled suggestively at her. I leaned over so that my shoulder just touched her knee.

  "I should like to go to America."

  "Mmmmmmm?" I said, leaning over a little farther, and tugged at my tie, which had bound itself tightly around my neck.

  "Yes," she said. "Oh, does your neck hurt? Here, I will rub it." She put her hand on my neck and began to knead it slowly, sensually, in time with the music.

  Here we go, I thought. I turned to the right and put my left hand up to pull her head down to mine.

  "Do you know," said Inge, stopping my hand in midair, "that America does not have the position in Europe that it once had?"

  "Huh?" I said, and I dropped my hand.

  "It is true. I mean, you will have to admit that your standing is not what it was in the 1940's."

  "Yeah," I said. "It's a shame." I reached up again for her head.

  "It's not that you're not respected," she said, and once more I dropped my hand. "You certainly do have respect. How could anyone help but respect your power? But America is no longer revered. That's it. The reverence that everyone had for America after the war is gone. You are respected, but not revered." She kneaded my neck until it hurt. "Feel better?" she said.

  "Swell."

  "Good. That always works." She stopped, and reached to the coffee table for a cigarette. "Does your back hurt, too?"

  "No," I said. "Why?"

  "You're leaning over so far. I thought perhaps you were uncomfortable."

  "No. That wasn't what it was." I sat up.

  "You have a good President, too," she said. "So that isn't the problem. Mr. Kennedy is liked in Europe."

  "I'm glad for him," I said. "It's too bad other people can't be as successful."

  "It isn't the people, really. I'm not sure what it is. I guess we feel some sort of resentment about the state of the world."

  "I see," I said. "And had we but world enough, and time, I'd love to talk it over with you. But for the moment, can't we forget it?"

  "That would be selfish," she said. "Yes, I think it is resentment. I think our people feel that you got us into this mess, and it's up to you to get us out of it. We resent having been dragged into it, and we resent not having been dragged out of it."

  "I don't see what I can do about it right now," I said.

  "No. But I hope you don't mind my saying those things. I hope you don't resent me now."

  "Perish the thought," I said.

  "Good. I'm glad. Now you must finish your drink. I have to be up early in the morning."

  I finished my drink, tightened my tie, and stood up.

  "Thank you for the evening," said Inge.

  "Not at all," I said. "I'm glad you could come."

  "I hope I will see you again before you leave Denmark. I enjoy this kind of conversation, and we see few foreigners to discuss things like this with."

  Two minutes later, I was standing on the sidewalk. I walked to the car, wondering whether to drive back to the hotel, spend the night, and come back for Bob in the morning, or to wait in the car. I sat in the car and had a cigarette. It was twenty minutes to two.

  At quarter to two the door to Bob's date's house opened, and I saw Bob and the girl standing in the doorway. They talked for a moment, then Bob bent down and kissed the girl on the cheek. She turned and went into the house, and Bob walked toward the car. His hands were jammed into his pockets, and he walked slowly.

  "Thank God," he said, when he saw me in the car. "I thought I'd have to wait all night. I was thinking of going back to the hotel."

  "So was I. No wonder Hamlet was a melancholy Dane."

  4

  On July 30 we started our run for the sun, and we drove all day. We spent one night in Germany with some friends of Bob's, the next night in a motel outside Frankfurt, the next in Geneva, and at five o'clock on the afternoon of August 2 we arrived in Cap d'Antibes, Alpes Maritimes (Cote d'Azur), France.

  Up to then, we had had no trouble finding rooms. We had spent about half the nights in hotels, the other half staying with various friends or friends of friends. On the

  Riviera we were stuck. From Grasse, a town above Cannes, I had called some friends of my parents, and they had asked us for dinner the following night, but not, as we had presumptuously assumed they would, to stay with them. There were no rooms free in Juan-les-Pins, a town down the coast from Cap d'Antibes, or in Cap d'Antibes or even in Antibes itself. Every Frenchman from every big city in France was on holiday, and in places like St. Tropez they were sleeping five or six in a room. We asked waiters, wine stewards, flower girls, drunks, everyone we saw, where we could get a room. Most of them just laughed, but some were kind enough to say, 'Impossible, monsieur." Finally, at eleven-thirty, we persuaded the patronne of a small hotel on the outskirts of Antibes to give us a cellar room for one night, and in exchange for wads of money we received two cots and a room the size of a steerage
class cabin on a toy boat. Bob went immediately to bed, and I filled out a traveler's check and fled to the casino in Antibes.

  I have an infallible system for roulette. You divide the wheel into five sections, like a pie, and put one chip on a number in the center of each section. This reduces the odds from 36-1 to around 7-1, and costs you only five times as much as if you just threw a chip on the number corresponding to the age of Best of Show in last year's Westminster Dog Show. It's quicker, too. Within an hour I lost my twenty dollars and went back to our cellar and went to bed. I had scarcely closed my eyes when there was a rap on the door. We were told, politely but firmly, that we would have to be out of our rooms before two. We packed the car and went to the beach.

  In August, the Riviera is hardly the paradise it's cracked up to be. In addition to the whole French nation, a substantial portion of Germany packs its Volkswagens and scurries to the Cote d'Azur for camping. Camping—or what the French pronounce as campeeng —is an almost entirely German institution. Thousands of Germans jam themselves into tiny lots, where they unfold their tents and unpack skimpy bathing suits from their knapsacks. The camps are usually right on the beach, clustered around snack bars. So the whole community is self-contained, and the Germans seldom venture out into the gaudy world of casinos and nightclubs.

  The English are there, too. It seems that every English secretary who has saved her shillings during the winter hops down to the Riviera for two weeks in August. They have the reputation of being the loosest girls on the Cote. It's something about not daring to let themselves go all out where people they know can notice and comment, but giving full vent to any and all desires when they're in a foreign country.

  Finally, there are the Americans, who, like the French, fall into two categories—the rich vacationers, who fly to the Riviera and fly straight home, and the tourists, en route perhaps from Paris to Florence, who mill around the streets in bikinis and dungarees. In the latter category, the only visible difference between the French and the Americans is that the French are trying to look nouvelle vague and the Americans are trying to look French.